Dead Pompeii

She spins her threadbare wool while on her porch Her eyes are swelled and closed, the trait of sages The charcoal grays between the black look scorched Her pepper hair is thin from fires or ages A mystic cradled in an ancient place Of dead Pompeii, a part of peeling lore Like weathered paint that’s left the wood’s embrace But stays a part of what it was before Whose eyes give answer to a long sought plot A flick of trickling green, a thread of gold A tale of wealth, archaic surfeit lost Remote and ashy, times that have grown cold But she in all her primal ways have learned That breaths forgotten speak through cities burned

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